Category: Government

Keep up with bills using OpenCongress

There’s a neat new website out there for all you political junkies and hopefully regular people. Its called Open Congress. Here’s something from their about page:

OpenCongress brings together official government information with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind what’s happening in Congress.

For most people, finding out what’s really happening in Congress is a daunting and time-consuming task. The legislative process is frequently arcane and closed-off from the public, resulting in frustration with Congress and apathy about politics.

Small groups of political insiders and lobbyists know what’s really going on in Congress, but this important information rarely makes its way into the light. The official website of the library of Congress, Thomas, publishes the full text of bills, but we can do much more to inform ourselves and make our government accessible. Now, with OpenCongress, everyone can be an insider.

OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement. OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation.

They have a blog and sections based on issues, like Technology, which list bills in that area. I’m going to subscribe to the RSS feed of their Congress Gossip Blog.

The General Assembly belongs to the people, not the powerful

HKonJ: Big March in Raleigh Tomorrow
Historic Thousands on Jones Street, aka HKonJ, is tomorrow. Check out this video of Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, President of the North Carolina State NAACP.

From the HKonJ website:

HKonJ: The People’s General Assembly

In order to make substantial and progressive change in North Carolina public policy, we need a movement and not a moment.

HKonJ is a call by the North Carolina NAACP to the progressive and civil rights community to come together to support 14-point public policy strategy that will begin to shift North Carolina political action in a way that will more clearly match our rhetoric with reality.

February 12, 2007 is the 98th birthday of the NAACP, in commemoration of a time when progressive whites and blacks came together to fight racial injustice and social inequality. Today, our challenges revolve around the issues of education, health, labor rights, economic empowerment, civic engagement, and criminal justice.

The goals of HKonJ are to:

* Gather 50-100 people from 100 counties in Raleigh before the General Assembly to embrace a 14-point agenda that we demand the legislature to act upon. We will insert the 14-point agenda in every political debate and discussion until they become a reality.

* Remind North Carolina that the General Assembly belongs to the people, not the powerful; to everyday folk, not just those with the money and the influence.

* Create a statewide network of the progressive and civil rights community which we will build in order to promote a progressive agenda and civil rights in North Carolina .

HKonJ will not be a moment, but a movement. This event will bring hardworking, everyday people together and on March 28, 2007 the Second Annual People of Color Legislative Day where we bring hundreds of people together to lobby the General Assembly will be held.

Criticize Congress go to jail?

All the presidential campaigns better look into this ASAP.
Update: Read Was I duped by Astroturf?.

Congress to Send Critics to Jail, Says Richard Viguerie

MANASSAS, Va., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following is a statement by Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of GrassrootsFreedom.com,
regarding legislation currently being considered by Congress to regulate grassroots communications:

“In what sounds like a comedy sketch from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, but isn’t, the U. S. Senate would impose criminal penalties, even jail time, on grassroots causes and citizens who criticize Congress.

“Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history, critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself.

via Slashdot from prnnewswire

How exactly will the Feds determine how many people my blog communicates with? Blogtapping? Its technically feasible.

Read more at grassrootsfreedom.com.

Context

Richard A. Viguerie of American Target Advertising, a direct marketing advertising company, pioneered political/ideological direct mail in the 1960s and 1970s. That marriage of direct mail and politics enabled grassroots Americans to participate in the political process to a greater degree than ever before and built the conservative movement that elected President Reagan in 1980. Viguerie’s effort was so important that John F. Kennedy Jr.’s magazine, GEORGE, included it on its list of the defining political moments of the 20th century. In December 1999, Lee Edwards in a WASHINGTON TIMES column listed Richard Viguerie as one of 13 “Conservatives of the Century.” He is now pioneering the use of the Internet on behalf of conservative free-market politicians and organizations.

The WASHINGTON POST called him the “conservatives’ Voice of America.” He has been credited with forming dozens of conservative organizations and with helping them grow stronger through political action, think tanks, publications, and representation in the U.S. House and Senate, state legislatures and other levels of government.

via PBS – NOW with Bill Moyers

End our dependancy on Oil

A good reason not to have permanent military bases in Iraq, besides the prevention of more needless death, is to help mitigate the United States dependency on oil. The Bush administration, and many other politicians on both sides of the aisle, want the US to stay in Iraq to secure Middle East oil all for themselves.

The desperation of the coming escalation of criminal lunacy is based not on some fantasy but on a real and coming competition between the U.S. and basically everyone else for these energy stores, even as most honest experts agree that world production of oil has now peaked and will begin an inexorable and irreversible decline. The reason for attempting to implant permanent U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf area and install compliant governments (the real reason for the war from the very beginning) has everything to do with securing control over the region.

Read the rest of Stan Goff’s new article Petraeus! Is Baghdad Burning? on the Truthdig site.